


Hearts and Diamonds

by lesbianoodle



Series: Drabbles for Davekatweek (2) [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Day Four, Eating Disorders, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, davekatweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8171354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianoodle/pseuds/lesbianoodle
Summary: The new kid seems to attach himself to Dave rather quickly. Day Four: Sadstuck





	

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't even well written rip my soul
> 
> other fics in this series might be late

"This is fucking stupid." says the kid who's hiding any ribs that might be showing underneath a thick dark sweater, "I don't even need to be here right now. I have other fucking shit that I have to get done like; I don't know, applying to college? This is such a waste of time."

He must be a new kid because Dave hasn't seen him around here before. He sizes him up because even though everybody here says they shouldn't judge people on appearances, he can't help comparing himself to the new kid. The new kid looks like he has his shit together, despite the dark circles around his eyes, and there's the kind of burning determination in his eyes that Dave has rarely seen since he arrived here. The new kid has both of his sweater sleeves pulled down to his wrists, so Dave can't check what the band around his wrist says. 

He can't believe that the new kid is already here. They normally don't put the new kids into this activity until they've been here a couple of days because the smell of the foods they put out on the table can be triggering. The woman starts explaining for the sake of new kid how this activity works but Dave already knows: they lay out a bunch of "binge" foods on the table and everybody learns about eating appropriate portions. He sucks at this. 

But as he glances up and down the row of other kids, he decides that he must be in the top five at least because most of these kids are only on red or orange. No. No. No. Dave shakes his head to himself, reminding himself firmly that he can't compare himself to other people. It's a bad habit of his, which apparently stems from a lack of attention as a child or something like that. Pretty much everything that's wrong with him now stems from when he was a little kid. Dave snaps the green band against his wrist and reminds himself where he is. 

"Dave." The woman in charge says firmly.

He drops both hands to his sides. He knows that the staff here hate it when he does that with his band- pulling it back away from his wrist and snapping it back into place. They think he does it to fuck with them or something, make them nervous, but it's just another bad habit of his. Dave wonders if he has a single habit that isn't bad. And then, the woman says they can start and people start gingerly stepping towards the table. Dave picks up one of the paper plates and turns it over in his fingers, surveying the table. 

There's every kind of bad food anybody could ever imagine. Thick tubs of ice cream in a rainbow of flavours, soft from sitting in a warm room and ready to melt in Dave's mouth. Greasy fries tangled in a pile, tubes of potato chips dusted with tasty flavouring, thick cookie dough squeezed into grey bags with spoons stuck in them. Little cakes with pastel icing covering their fluffy insides, stacks of fizzy soda cans, and uneven chunks of milky chocolate. Dave is practically watering at the mouth just looking at it all. 

The new kid is unimpressed. "What the fuck is this even supposed to be about? I'm not touching any of that shit and I wouldn't if my life depended on it."

Judging by the thin frame Dave estimates he has, new kid's life might depend on it. 

"Dude." Dave addresses the new kid directly, still spinning the paper plate around in his hands like it's a ferris wheel, "I know it's probably hard since you're a newbie but you gotta start somewhere, right?" 

"Fuck this." New kid crosses his arms firmly across his chest, "I don't need this." 

Dave's not a therapist so he doesn't try and convince the kid to give his body what it needs to survive. Instead, he steps up to the table and begins to graze. He knows what his body can handle, now that he's been here a few weeks and he's more aware of what is good and what is bad. He picks up a piece of fried chicken, slick with grease, and drops it onto his plate. It slides about unappealingly, leaving marks on the plate. And another. He moves past the pizza quickly because it reminds him too much of how things used to be. 

Dave has a theory that everybody here has a specific food that they first binged on. His just happens to be pizza because when he lived with Bro, it was the easiest thing to access because he ordered it all the time. There was a pizza place just down from the street and Bro always sent Dave to pick the pizzas up. Dave would pick a couple of slices out of the box and not even bother slapping them down on a plate, retreating to his room so that he could stuff them down his throat. Bro didn't think much of it. Of course he didn't. Dave had always had a big appetite. 

He drops a loose handful of fries onto his plate and sits down on one of the plastic chairs around the table. These chairs remind him of the ones that he used to sit on in elementary school and it doesn't help that all the kids in this group sit at one table, like they're in a school cafeteria. Dave doesn't examine his food too closely because he knows that once he sees the dripping grease, he'll feel sick. Instead, he just tears a piece of his chicken and places it in his mouth. He chews slowly, taking in the taste and texture, before swallowing. 

The new kid is reluctantly slumped next to him. "This sucks."

"Yeah." Dave agrees, remembering how he felt when he once got here, "But things are going to get better. Underneath the cheesy bullshit, the people here are actually trying to help you. You might just have to suck it up and deal with it, newbie." 

The new kid snorts and snaps open the soda that the woman in charge placed in front of him. He takes a small, nearly unmeasurable, sip from it and shudders in disgust. As he lifts the can to his lips the second time, face screwed up in displeasure, Dave catches sight of the red band poking out from under his sweater. New kid's got a long way to go. 

The new kid's name turns out to be Karkat and he's a prickly fucker. Most people are pissed off or miserable when they first get here and that makes sense because their parents have just shipped them off to an institute; but Karkat is a different case altogether. It seems that his entire personality is just "permanently pissed off" and nothing else. For the first few days, Dave tries to talk to him but can't get anything out of him except insults. He tries everything. Why does he bother? Well, new kid's cute. Even when he's scowling. 

But Dave doesn't really learn much about him until the beginning of Karkat's second week. Dave has just woken up, after having a bad dream as he usually does, and he's stumbling blearily out of his room and towards the bathroom. On the bad nights, he can't bear to be alone with nothing but his snoring roommate to keep him company. He's hoping to splash a little water on his face, make sure nobody can tell he was crying, and then he's going to go to the nurse's desk and ask for a sleeping pill. 

He's half-way to the bathroom when he bumps into a small figure in the hallway. Karkat turns to him and opens his mouth to yell at him, when he seems to remember what time of night it is and decides to hold his tongue instead. He trails after Dave to the bathroom. 

"Dude." Dave looks at him, "I ain't no fucking tour guide. Stop following me around." 

Karkat reaches up and helpfully wipes a tear that was still stuck to Dave's chin away for him with the side of his finger. "I'm not following you, shithead. I just need somewhere to be except that hell they call a room. My roommate's an overdramatic bastard and will flip his shit if I wake him up." 

"Right." Dave runs the tap in one of the sinks for a while before leaning forward and splashing himself in the face. He manages to get in his mouth and nose, which makes him choke. Real fucking smooth in front of the new kid. He wipes his face on his sleeve 

"How long have you been here?" Karkat is still standing next to him. 

"About two months." Dave tells him, "But most people get out quicker than that." 

"Why are you still here then?" Karkat wants to know. 

For a moment, Dave wonders if he should even tell him the reason; but he guesses that if he doesn't, Karkat will just ask somebody else and hear the rumours instead. It hurts to talk about it though. Dave rubs some of the sleep from his eyes and stares in the mirror at how sore and red his eyes are. How long was he crying? He can't be sure. But he already was when he woke up. He looks in the mirror and calls himself names he would never say to anyone else. 

Then, he tells Karkat in a casual tone about the fact that he has a couple of other issues that he needs to straighten out before he can leave. He does not mention the fact that he has vivid nightmares, wakes up in the middle of the night crying, and all because his Bro never treated him properly. He certainly doesn't mention how the root of his eating disorder is his insecurity and how he still hasn't managed to master the whole "security" issue yet. He definitely doesn't mention the fact that he had a private relapse last week and got his stay extended. 

"My therapist said some of the kids here were like me." Karkat pushes, "Are you one of those unfortunate fuckers?" 

"Like you?" Dave pretends not to know what he means. 

Karkat pauses. Then, he tugs on the collar of his sweater and pulls it slightly to one side. Dave gets a long glimpse at the bony shoulder of a kid who must be starving, which is patterned with bruises that are black and blue. It's hideous and Dave nearly throws up just looking at it. But he manages to keep ahold of himself and just nod. 

"I guess I am one of those unfortunate fuckers." Dave says. 

Karkat nods. And they look each other over for a long moment before Karkat tells him that he'll see him sometime tomorrow if he can be fucking bothered to find him and lets the door fall shut behind him. Dave wonders if he just made a friend. 

True to his words, the next day Karkat comes over and sits next to him at breakfast. And he says that the food here is awful and Dave rolls his eyes and they bicker like they've known each other for years. Karkat slices his food as small as he can, dissecting it into ant-sized pieces, before the nearby nurse comes over and tells him that it's small enough. Reluctantly, he stabs one of the pieces of bacon with his fork and pokes it in his mouth. He nearly gags. 

There's an unspoken rule around the institution that you never ask anybody what's wrong with them or how they got here but Dave is tempted to break it as he watches Karkat frown at his breakfast like its insulted him. He pokes a few more atom-sized pieces of bacon around the plate before laying his knife and fork across the plate, looking disgusted. Dave keeps eating his breakfast slowly, bit by bit, because he knows that the reward for finishing breakfast is a hot cup of coffee and he needs one after his midnight wander. 

Karkat watches him and says bluntly: "You don't seem like there's anything wrong with you." 

"Don't you know you aren't supposed to ask people shit like that?" Dave says, too quickly. He doesn't like to admit it but talking about how he got here is a sensitive subject; nobody would go around bragging about how they passed out mid-strife and were found on the roof by some terrified neighbours. Bro must have ditched him or something but Dave can't be too mad at him because he's paying for Dave to be here. Dave can never quite figure Bro out. 

"Shit, sorry." Karkat mutters. He picks up his fork and stabs a mushroom to death with it, obviously ashamed of saying the wrong thing. He probably didn't know any better. 

Dave swallows and looks at him. "I'll talk if you talk." 

Still fiddling with his fork, Karkat thinks hard about this. Dave can tell because there's a crease in his forehead and his eyebrows pull together, giving him the cutest expression, and he nearly leans in his breakfast. He nods, puts his fork down, and folds his arms across his chest. 

"Fine." Karkat says, "But it's not a fun story."

And he tells him about some ex-boyfriend who was nearly always high and when he wasn't, he was a complete shithead to everybody. Including Karkat. He talks about how he felt like crap for years and how it made him hate himself and how that made him starve himself. And he talks about how every time he binged, it felt like his self-control was crumbling and how he got stuck in the same awful cycle as Dave. And he got put in this place because his brother has figured out what was going on and told his dad about it. 

"I'm going to get out of here." Karkat says, firmly, "I have to get out of here as soon as possible. I need to go to college. College is the only way that I'm ever going to get out of the shithole I live in and get a decent education." He adds, "And my dad can't afford to send me to this place. The longer I'm here, the more fucked he is because of his pathetic son." 

"I'm sure he doesn't think of it like that." Dave says, "It sounds like he cares about you. I mean, if he's putting all his money towards sending you here, then you must be really important to him or some shit." 

Karkat shrugs at him. 

Dave's theory about everybody having a trigger food is proven to be right that very week when everybody in their group files into a room and a series of very specific foods are laid out on the table. He hears a couple of audible gasps and one girl towards the back of the room actually dry heaves, causing everybody nearby to step away from her quickly. She doesn't puke though. Dave is reminded of that one Doctor Who episode set in the hotel, where everybody has a room with their greatest fear inside. This is one freaky house of horrors. 

The woman in charge tells them all where they're sitting, even though Dave's sure that everybody catches onto where they're supposed to sit quickly. He's been staring at the stack of pizza slices and trying to keep breakfast down since he stepped inside the room. The sight of pizza makes him want to bolt instantly and sends shivers down both his arms. But reluctantly, he does take his seat in front of it. 

Karkat is flat-out refusing. "No, no, no, fuck this shit, nobody said I'd have to deal with shit like this. I wouldn't have signed up if I knew there was shit like this. I swore I'd never touch anything like that again. I-"

Etcetera. Dave guesses that he didn't study the brochure very hard because "exposure to food" or whatever fancy words they put it in is printed on the back in nice lettering right underneath "friendly counselling". But Karkat doesn't seem to know this, as he is almost at a point of hysterics when the woman in charge calls a therapist over and asks if they can help him. Karkat is lead from the room, looking on a verge of breakdown. 

By now, everybody else has seated themselves at the table- all green bands who are probably all packing to go home, some amber bands with the willingness to cooperate, and a couple of shaking people who are still on the red band. The girl to the left of Dave- the one who almost puked on the floor- is picking at the skin under her thumbnail nervously. Dave peers down the table, looking for the empty seat, and his eyes fall on where some kind of soft meat sits on a plate. Karkat's plate. He doesn't recognise it but it smells like the ocean. 

The woman in charge, as always, talks them through their meals. She teaches them to eat slowly, chewing every morsel and taking in the flavour and thinking more about the food than theirselves. Dave barely manages to take a few bites of the slimy pizza and almost hurls when he feels it slithering down his throat and curling in his stomach. He manages a half a slice before he remembers with a flash how he would swallow without chewing at home and then puke in the sink, feeling for once like he was in control. That is bad, Dave tells himself, hurting your body does not give you control over it. And it's stupid to think like that.

Karkat returns midway through but refuses to sit in his seat. He sits against the wall instead, hunched over on the floor like a crab, and presses his face into his knees. 

"Crab..." Dave realises, in barely a mutter, as he glances at where Karkat's plate remains untouched. 

Dave doesn't manage much more of his pizza but the woman in charge praises every single one of them for facing their fears; Karkat wraps his arms tightly around legs and breathes heavily. Heavily enough for Dave to hear him. Heavily enough that Dave can hear him from the other side of the room. Heavily enough that when the group ends, Dave doesn't file out of the room with everybody else and crouches beside Karkat instead. 

There's still a therapist here, trying to talk to him. But Karkat has already shut himself away. 

"Dude." Dave touches his shoulder. 

Karkat wrenches his shoulder away. "Don't give me the sympathetic bullshit, Dave." 

_"Dude."_ Dave repeats. 

That's when Karkat actually looks up, brushing his bangs aside so that he can scowl at him properly. Dave meets his eyes and stares into the dark pupils, which seem to melt into his irises, and places his hand on Karkat's shoulder again. This time, he doesn't try to squirm free of his hand and just looks at him with a scowl. 

"What the fuck do you want?" Karkat demands. 

"In the common room, they've got some shitty video games and I need a player two." 

Karkat looks at him in astonishment for a moment before nodding and resting his back against the wall, using it to push himself back up to his feet. He lets Dave sling an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close in an entirely platonic bro kind of way, as they head down to the common room together. Dave knows he's going to get shit for it later- therapist's don't like it when you take other patient's matters into your hands, since you're supposed to focus on yourself. But was Dave just supposed to leave him there? 

Dave knows the way to the common room like he knows the back of his left hand and guides Karkat with him. The new kid didn't even seem to know they had a common room, judging by the disguised surprise on his face, and he steps inside reluctantly like he thinks Dave is fucking with him. The common room is a pretty boring place with badly painted walls, motivational posters and board games that Dave is pretty sure were old when his parents were young. But there is a vintage selection of video games that is pretty golden. 

"Thanks anyway, shithead." Karkat says, as he sits on the couch beside him, "For not abandoning me."

"I get it. What you're going through. We're the same." Dave says. 

Karkat shakes his head. "I'm much sicker than you are." 

And that night, Karkat disappears. 

At first Dave doesn't notice he's gone, until he's looking around the table at dinner for somewhere to sit and doesn't manage to spot his friend. He presumes that Karkat has gotten held up somewhere and will be along in a moment, sitting down at the end of the table and beginning to poke at the sandwich on his plate. He keeps telling himself that Karkat is probably talking to a therapist or in the bathroom or something. But as the evening drags on and he has to spend his free time playing solitaire. And he retires to his room with no fucking clue where Karkat has gone. 

He can't sleep. He's worried that Karkat has been hospitalised or something. 

When Karkat returns at breakfast the next day, he looks a lot moodier than usual but Dave doesn't care about that. He's too busy hugging him and asking him where's he been to notice the tube that now curls up Karkat's nose like a snake. The new kid points at it as way of explanation and Dave frowns. People only get the tubes if their body weight is so severely under and they're still refusing to eat anything- the last guy to get one of those was an anorexic not a... Not like them. Karkat keeps fiddling with the tube, looking uncomfortable. Dave wonders how he got stuck with a tube. 

"Does it hurt?" Dave asks, gingerly. 

"Not really. Hurt like a son of a bitch when they put it in though." Karkat tells him.

"Why'd they give it to you?"

"I told my therapist that I wasn't going to eat any of the shit they're forcing me to put on my plate because it was too fucking difficult for me. And she asked if I'd rather have a tube, since it's easier than trying to convince my body to function properly. And I said yes." Karkat shrugs, "I want to get out of this place."

Dave notes it's changed from "I'm getting out of here" to "I want to get out of here". 

He doesn't talk much for the rest of breakfast and instead stares at his cornflakes with the burning determination that Dave had once seen in his eyes slowly fading away. Day by day, bit by bit, he watches Karkat succumb to what they all eventually succumb too. When they first get here, everybody is sure they're fine and ready to leave. Nobody thinks they'll be here very long- and some people are right about that. But the longer people stay, the less hope they have that they're ever leaving. Dave gave up ever leaving when they tried to contact Bro for a visit and he didn't even pick up the calls. 

"Pretty sure he's ditched my ass here permanently." Dave tells Karkat one night as they're watching a movie in the common room with everybody else. The two of them are sitting on an armchair, squished up together, with Dave's legs hanging over the arm and Karkat's feet resting on Dave's stomach. 

"Can't they just let you go home?" Karkat asks. 

"Not without a guardian to take care of me." Dave sighs. 

"That's fucking stupid." That was Karkat's opinion on nearly everything, "Why don't you just come and live with me or something?"

"Are you being serious?" Dave looks at him, trying to work out if he's just joking. 

Karkat just stares at the movie, refusing to meet his gaze, and acts like he's entirely invested in whatever innocent Disney bullshit they're playing. Dave swears that he sees Karkat's face darken in embarrassment but it's hard to tell in a dark room with the only light coming from the small TV screen. 

"Maybe." Karkat mutters, "If I don't die here." 

"You're not going to die." Dave promises. 

The day after that, the woman in charge has them do an activity about body positivity and makes them sit in the circle in the room. Dave pulls up a chair next to Karkat and lazes in his chair, barely listening to the instructions. He's been here long enough to do every possible body positivity activity that the people in charge can think of- most of them are pretty craptastic over-cheery bullshit based but Dave's grown to like them. He guesses there's nothing wrong with admitting you like some things about yourself, even if it is a task that he struggles with. 

Growing up being treated like shit has made him feel like shit. 

This time, they seem to be going around the circle and talking about the aspects they like the most about themselves. The first few people stumble over their words, like they're surprised they can even come up with something good about themselves- it makes Dave sad to watch, he has to admit. He just sits and there and thinks, trying to have something ready for when they get to him. He looks himself over, trying to keep his critical thoughts away. 

The girl next to him says she likes her cuticles and then, it's his turn. 

"My hair's pretty cool." Dave runs a hand through it as he talks, "And my shades are bitchin' obviously. And I guess I like the fact that I seem to be getting better." 

A few of the people in the group eye him jealously, Karkat included, and Dave looks at the ground in shame. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that last one. He didn't want to make anybody else feel like shit. 

It's Karkat's turn. 

"I, uh-" He stutters, at a loss for words for probably the first time in his entire life, "I guess what I like- uh- fuck you, I don't have to tell you guys anything!" 

The woman in charge looks at him with pity and tries to encourage him to say something but Karkat just shuts up, shaking his head. 

He really can't think of anything. 

"I think you're beautiful." Dave says, before he can stop himself. 

Karkat stares down at his lap. He doesn't look up for the rest of the group, not saying anything even when he's prompted with questions, and Dave knows he must have said something wrong. When the group ends, Dave tries to follow Karkat down the corridor with the intent of asking him what's wrong but the woman in charge catches him by the arm. She makes him stay back and tells him that forming romantic relationships with any other patients normally doesn't end well and isn't good for the recovery process. He tells her it's nothing like that. 

He's not in love with Karkat. It's not like that. It's more like... Karkat is the younger brother he never had or something- even though Karkat is actually several months older than him- and he just wants to look after him. He wants to make sure that Karkat gets better and gets out of this place so that he can start applying to colleges. 

Karkat isn't in the common room during free time. Dave finds him sitting in his room. 

"What the fuck do you want, Dave? You know what happened to me the last time I dated a guy, why are you still trying to get in my pants?" Karkat demands. 

"It's not like that, Karkat." Dave protests, sitting down on the other end of the bed; and he tells him the exact same thing he just told the woman in charge, "You're my bro, man. I want you to get better. The fact that you can't say anything good about yourself sucks. I just wanted to help you out." 

Karkat sighs. "There's no point trying to help me. You're going to go home soon and then I'll be here alone and you'll forget about me." 

"I won't forget about you." Dave says. 

Karkat frowns. "Promise?"

"Promise." Dave repeats. 

And Karkat moves down the bed, wrapping his arms tightly around his neck. "I really hope you stay here just a little for a while longer. I'll miss you when you leave." 

"I don't think Bro will ever come and pick me up. Don't worry about it." 

He manages to convince Karkat to come back to the common room with him and they reclaim control of the TV so that they can play video games that are probably older than them. Dave notices the woman in charge watching them disapprovingly from the corner but he pays no mind to them. He knows that this isn't the kind of place to form attachments but he's sure that even Karkat will manage to leave before Dave does- it's not like Bro even contacts the people in charge except to pay the weekly fee for Dave staying here. 

Karkat retires to bed early, saying that he doesn't feel good and needs to rest, and Dave walks him back to his room. Out of habit, he lays an arm across Karkat's shoulder as he walks him to the room. He can't stop staring at the tube that Karkat still has attached to his face. Apparently, it's the only way the staff have managed to get him to eat since he got here. Karkat point blank refused to eat anything else that they put in front of him. Karkat has such a long way to go before he's anywhere close to leaving this place and Dave wants to help him. 

Dave is heading back to the common room when the woman in charge stops him. He's expecting to get another lecture about being too close with Karkat and how it isn't good for either of them. But she tells him something he wasn't ever expecting. 

"Your mother has contacted us." She tells him.

"No way." Dave breathes, "She hasn't spoken to me in years. Not since she left me with Bro." 

"Well, she's interested in coming for a visit. It might be the first step towards you finally leaving." The woman in charge smiles at him, "Isn't it great, Dave? You can go home." 

Dave's heart squeezes. "How long do you think that will take?"

"A week or two at most." The woman in charge tells him, "There's some paperwork your mother will have to fill out but it shouldn't take too long. She's certainly already proven herself to be a more capable guardian than your brother. Even if she does have some... Uh, drinking problems." 

Dave glances back at where the door to Karkat's room has shut. 

"That's great." He says, flatly.


End file.
